A recently-released book by Seamus Bruner says Bill Gates of Microsoft fame owns at least 268,984 of farmland, making him the largest farm owner in the United State.
He ia also an early and major investor in Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, both making and marketing plant-based proteins that compete with meats.
He also lobbies for regulations that will restrict livestock and poultry farming.
His first farmland acquisitions were third-generation family-run Coggins Farm and Stanley Farms in Georgia in 2013 and 2014, respectively. The two merged their holdings — thousands of acres in Georgia and Florida — into Generation Farms in 2016.
In 2017, Gates made his largest farmland purchase buying 61 properties across various states in a single deal. It cost him more than $500 million.
His farms in north Louisiana — his largest holding — comprise nearly 70,000 acres and grow corn, cotton, rice, and soybeans. His second-largest agricultural holding is in Arkansas with approximately 47,000 acres. In Nebraska, Gates’s companies grow soybeans and other crops across roughly 20,000 acres.
Gates’s 14,500-acre potato farm in Washington State supplies McDonalds, among others. Gates bought100 Circle Farm it for $171 million from Conagra in 2018.
